Using the Widget Connector

Speeding up macro entry with autocomplete: Type { and the beginning of the macro name, to see a list of suggested macros. Details are in Using Autocomplete.

To edit an existing macro: Click the macro placeholder and choose Edit. A macro dialog window will open, where you can edit the parameters of the macro.

Parameters

Parameters are options that you can set to control the content or format of the macro output. Where the parameter name used in Confluence storage format or wikimarkup is different to the label used in the macro browser, it will be listed below in brackets (example).

Parameter

Description

Web Site's Widget URL(url)

This is the URL provided by the external web site for embedding content from that web site onto another web page.

The gadget's summary page will open. Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. The URL looks something like this one:

You can also use the URL of the 'add gadget' page. The page is called 'Add "gadgetx" to your iGoogle page':

There are a couple of ways to get to the 'add gadget' page:

Click a '+Google' button underneath the gadget when displayed on a page somewhere.

Or click 'Add Stuff' on your iGoogle page.

Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. The URL would look something like this one:

Widgetbox widgets

You will need to find the URL for the Widgetbox widget you want to display.

Here is one way to find a widget's URL:

Ensure you are logged in to Widgetbox and that you are viewing the Widgetbox Gallery.

Find the widget you want then click its name, such as 'cyber-pet'.

The widget's summary page will open. Within the Get Widget section, click the Atlassian Confluence icon . The Widgetbox Add to Confluence dialog box appears, containing the URL required for the Widget Macro. If you cannot see this icon, click the more... link to reveal it.

In the Widgetbox Add to Confluence dialog box, click Copy.

Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. The URL looks something like this one:

YouTube

You will need to find the URL for the YouTube video that you want to display.

Choose Long link, then copy the long URL. It looks something like this:

Note: You must use the long YouTube URL. The shortened URL (like this one: http://www.youtu.be/<video_key>) does not work in the widget connector. If you are unable to view the video in some browsers, use https: rather than http in your link.

MySpace Videos

You will need to find the URL for the MySpace video that you want to display.

Twitter

Note: Due to a recent change to the Twitter API, the process for displaying Tweets has changed. The following instructions relate to v 2.1.6 of the Widget Connector plugin. Earlier versions of the Widget Connector no longer display tweets correctly.

To embed a single tweet:

In Twitter, navigate to the tweet you wish to embed and choose Details to display just that tweet in your browser.

Copy the page URL (the URL should be in the following format, https://twitter.com/atlassian/status/346976521250037760).

In Confluence, paste the URL into the Widget Connector.

The single tweet will display, like the one below.

To embed a dynamic list of tweets:

In Twitter, create a Widget (go to Settings > Widgets).

Configure the widget to display the tweets you wish to embed (for example, a user timeline, list of tweets or hashtag search).

Save the widget, then copy the page URL (the URL should be in the following format, https://twitter.com/settings/widgets/354381809263472640/edit)

In Confluence, paste the URL into the Widget Connector.

The list of tweets will display, like the one below.

FriendFeed

To display the latest messages from a FriendFeed user, add the user's FriendFeed link as the URL in the Widget macro. For example:

BackType

To display the latest blog or website comments from a BackType user, add the user's BackType widget link as the URL in the Widget macro. For example:

SlideShare

You will need to find the URL for the SlideShare presentation that you want to display.

In the calendar list on the left side of the page, ensure the appropriate calendar is selected, click the down-arrow button next to the calendar name and then select the Calendar settings option. (Alternatively, if available, click the Manage Calendars link at the bottom of the calendar list and then click the name of the appropriate calendar.)

In the Calendar Address section, click the HTML button. A pop-up message with your calendar's public URL appears.

Copy the URL from this pop-up message. The URL looks something like this:

Paste the URL into the Widget macro code on your Confluence page.

Wufoo HTML Form Builder

To display an HTML form built in the Wufoo HTML Form Builder, add the form's link as a URL to the Widget Macro. For example:

Wufoo Reports

To display a Wufoo Report built using the Wufoo Report Manager, add the report's link as a URL to the Widget Macro. For example:

Get Satisfaction social support application

To display a feedback form for a Get Satisfaction community, add the community or company link as a URL to the Widget Macro. For example:

Troubleshooting

If the URL given in the Widget Connector macro does not work, the macro displays an icon and the base URL.

For example, the following code:

will result in an image like the one below:

example.com

Code examples

The following examples are provided for advanced users who want to inspect or edit the underlying markup for a Confluence page.

105 Comments

Most of the interesting google gadgets require user configuration.
For instance adding a bunch of world clocks for different timezones [http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=www.ljmsite.com%2Fgoogle%2Fgadgets%2Fworldclocks.xml]

Anonymous

I agree .... without the ability to edit the custom inputs of a google gadget, this feature is worthless, which is a real shame as it provides so much potentially great information to add to customised dashboards and alike.

It would be nice to hear back from Atlassian if this is something on the roadmap or even if it's within the control to provide this feature.

Anonymous

wow - this is amazing!! I realize anything other than google-based presentations will not work. Is support for the other google apps (i.e. google docs / spreadsheet / etc) being considered? This would make confluence the essential platform as a communcations hub (well, even more than it is)!

The problem is getting the data from Google. So far they only provide widgets that allow for embedding presentations. As soon as other documents are supported by Google you can be sure that we will support them as well.

Anonymous

for some reason when i add any of the widgetbox macros in, they all show up with the gear box (the URL is copied straight from their site's button). Wondering if firewall could be blocking this? we are able to display the sample youtube and flickr ones on this page but not the others. could it be flash version issue?

Anonymous

Anonymous

Hi . Newbie to Confluence.

You want to embed your own video file maybe wmv or .mov file from your servers. How does that occur as a macro ? May I ask what the syntax would look like. Where would the movie file reside in the repository? Just some questions!

This macro does not support any embedded contents other than those mentioned here. However, you can use the HTML Macro to embed objects in your page. If the movie file resides in Confluence, you will need to identify:

The full, valid URL to the video attachment

If the video attachment is not anonymously accessible in Confluence, make sure that people who views the video has the permission to view the attachment

I'll admit I'm not the most savvy wiki editor, but I'm plodding along...

At any rate, I'm trying to add a countdown widget to my enterprise wiki. I used widgetbox and upgraded the plugin. The widget displays, and I can edit ti, but then the clock just resets to 0. Thoughts?

Please give a try to re-enable it via plugin manager. The error that you experience with, usually happens when Confluence does start up after shutting down. Please give a try on it, if you still experience the problem. Please direct your issue to the support system for further investigation:

As far as I am concerned, this feature is not yet available in this macro. This might be achievable using another macro, which requires a different plugin. Anyway, feel free to raise a request if you are keen on this feature.

I have found out from here that if the the gadget contains "builtin" in the URL, it will be specific to iGoogle only.
In other words, it would not work in other containers.
I guess this is the case with the Google Gadget for Weather.

I'm not very familiar with the Wimba Classroom Conference format. Is your conference available in one of the 'Video' or 'Documentation and presentation' formats listed at the top of the page? If not, then unfortunately it is unlikely to work with this macro.

Alternatively, if Wimba Classroom Conference provides a gadget that supports the OpenSocial specification and can present a Wimba Classroom Conference, then you could try embedding this gadget onto a Confluence page using the Gadget Macro.

Rich Schone Did you ever get a fix for this? I am trying to embed a vimeo video from my plus account but only allow embedding in my Confluence wiki - I have set the domain properly to mydomain.atlassian.net but I still get the Vimeo error message.

Rich Schone or brad mcgilligan — I'm looking to fix this as well. I am trying to sell my team on adopting Confluence, but this Vimeo issue is holding everything up! Anybody have any fixes or workarounds?

None of the Widget Connector macros (except for YouTube) will work on any computer I test on. I posted about this on the Widget Connector page as well.

Anonymous

I had the same issue and as a workaround inserted the Vimeo content into my page as an IFrame: {IFrame... (Vimeo provides embedding links, containing the URL, for instance http://player.vimeo.cpm/video/<number>).

Does anyone know how to resolve the HTTPS pop up message you receive when the page with the widgets loads?

Our Confluence site is only accessible secure (https://) and we have a page with a twitter widget. When the page loads the user gets this errror:

Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?This webpage contains content that will not be delivered using a scure HTTPS connection,
which could compromise the security of the entire webpage.

Adding video work fine, but is it possible to force the still image as first image on the embedded player ?

Dailymotion or Youtube do not present the first image of your video, which is not convenient for presentation.

As today I do "widget http //www.dailymotion.com/video/xfvl0m_massiv-archi-intro-vga_techwidget:url=|width=640|height=480"
I would like to have something like widget:src=my-introduction-still-image.jpg url= http //www...."

Anonymous

Anonymous

Twitter feeds come in adding older and older tweets with no ability to scroll to newer tweets now scrolled off the bottom. Are there no controls for the presentation to limit number of tweets and the order?

First off, my compliments for the beautiful display and awesome variability of these widgets. However, I was just wondering if there's any way to change the positioning of the Get Satisfaction widget. By default it displays the little black link button on the left side of the page. This turns out to be right smack dab in the middle of the left nav pane and thus looks pretty silly. I tried overriding it in the space's CSS file. Like so:

However, this doesn't work, I think because the widget isn't pulling the CSS from the wiki, but somewhere else. I would appreciate any suggestions.

The short answer is: Yes. The only requirement is that the users browser has access to the video.

The long answer is: All the widget connector does is creating an embed tag for a video based on a URL. It's quite simple really. Here is how it works under the hood.

1. The user provides a URL to the macro.

2. The WidgetConnector tries to match the URL with all it's available renderer implementations.

3. If the URL matches a specific renderer, the relevant parts of the URL (eg. an ID) will be parsed out of the URL and substituted in the embed tag provided by the renderer.

4. The renderer writes out the embed tag into the HTML page.

Therefore the only requirement is that the user can access the video via the browser. It doesn't necessarily have to be on a public service since the URL will be requested via the embed tag in the Confluence page.

has there been any update on the https-issues mentioned earlier by Corey and Tom? We also run Confluence on https and can't use the Twitter connector plugin because it's generates a security warning regarding insecure content on the page. Or is there a way that the Confluence plugin calls https://api.twitter.com/ instead of http://api.twitter.com/? This would solve the issue.

I am using the widget connector macro for version 4.1.6. The widget connector works fine but is not centrally aligned inside the roundrect macro. ? Is there any way to fix it. Have used the center macro and align macro. Doesnt work. Any help would be appreciated

I am putting photos into set's and then uploading them to different parts of my site and I want each set to only show that set's photo's. This works on the confluence page. However, when you click on a photo in a set and go through to the Flickr site it shows all the photos (from all the set's) instead of taking me just to that set's photo's

Is there a way to make it so even when I click through to the Flickr site it automatically just shows that set's photo's (it is ok if the other photo's are accessible, I just want the set the person is actually looking for to be what comes up automatically)

Anonymous

under Confluence 3.4.7 I could use the widget to point at videos on an internal streaming server but I am in the process of testing on 4.1.9 and I seem to have lost that ability. Am I missing something in the usage or has that functionality truely gone away>

For example, using the URL mms://streamer.my.server.gov/general/ethics.wmv used to work. Now the widget is displayed but the video never runs.

Anonymous

Just tried embedding a Twitter feed into a Confluence page using this macro. The feed shows up fine, but the tweets appear (slowly) in reverse order (i.e. the most recent tweet first, then the second most recent tweet is added at the top and so on. This results (after a while) in a feed with the oldest post at the top, and the most recent ones scrolling away into cyberspace. Is this how it's meant to work?

Anonymous

Hi all,

I just want to include my twitter feed into a site and after following the instructions to include and to configure the widget it doesn't work at all. My page is still blank where the widget should appear. We have an ondemand solution with the latest Version of Confluence. Any hints how to get this up to speed and correct installed?

Not sure if it applies to the most recent version, but in 4.1 you have to enter the long version of the URL when linking to a YouTube video. The short version you get by default when you click "Share" is not valid.

Anonymous

Anonymous

This widget is not working for us at all. We are using Confluence version 5.1.5

Wufoo appears to now offer up https url's, which error out when attempting to display the forms in Confluence. Since there is an http version of a Wufoo form as an example here on this page, I attempted to integrate that same form as a test on our own confluence page. With my attempt, it no longer errors out, but it simply displays a blank page.... so really just a different problem with no solution as far as I can tell.

I have tried both Chrome and Firefox for my tests.

I also tried Google forms, but the notes above mention Google Docs in general don't work, so... that's probably my issue for those

I wasted a stupid amount of time trying to force this thing to work as it should only to cave and look for bugs on the thing. Ultimately I came across this bug:
CONF-30256
-
Widget macro does not allow https URLs for wufoo formsOpen

I hope my comment spares others' the severe time sink that I personally fell into trying to figure out why this thing wasn't working.

I would like to add a feed for Flipboard, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and BrightTALK. Is this possible using the Widget Connector Macro, or a combination of this macro plus others? Thank you!